Come 2012, Follow These Polls

Polling inaccuracies might surprise us today

(NEWSER) - We keep hearing doom and gloom for the Democrats, and there’s a good chance that’s accurate, writes Nate Silver in the New York Times . But thanks to a few potential polling flaws, things could turn out differently; the Dems might even hang onto the House. Here’s why:

1. Polls often skip cell-phone-only voters—Some 25% of adults don’t use landlines at all, and their demographics lean Democratic.

'Strange election' offers wide range of outcomes, says Nate Silver

(NEWSER) - Polls are showing a huge range of possible results for tomorrow, with generic ballots suggesting anything from a 15-point Republican lead to a 3-point Democratic lead. “The fact is that there’s not really any way to say who’s right,” writes FiveThirtyEight polling guru Nate Silver in the New York Times . Even his own highly sophisticated model offers a wide range of outcomes: Last night it predicted a gain of 53 seats for the GOP, but its "95% confidence interval" runs from 23 seats to 81. More»

They're ignoring 25% of the populace

(NEWSER) - Yeah, it's expensive, but pollsters need to start calling cellphones. According to the latest CDC data, 23% of US adults, or 25% of US households are cellphone-only, writes Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com . Add in “cellphone-mostly” households and that jumps to 40%—and it could be even higher by November, never mind 2012. These people are just being ignored, even though they are very different from their landline counterparts. More»

Obama's share of vote in 2008 best predictor of House Democrats' positions

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama may have sown the seeds to last night's victory with the one in 2008: House Democrats in districts Obama carried were much more likely to vote in favor of health reform. Retiring members aside, Nate Silver writes, “all 12 Democrats running in a place where Obama received less than 40% of the vote decided against the bill, whereas 195 of 202 running where he received a majority voted for it.” In Silver’s opinion, the vote hinged on the 2010 election for both the yeas and the nays. More»

They're not swing states, but they have a lot of swing voters: Nate Silver

(NEWSER) - You already know all about swing states; today in the New York Times , Nate Silver introduces another important factor in the 2012 election: elastic states, which can produce difficult-to-predict results. Swing states, he explains, sometimes have very few swing voters (see North Carolina, where likely Democratic voters are fairly evenly matched with likely Republican voters and the election pretty much comes down to turnout), while elastic states are not necessarily swing states, but they do have a lot of swing voters. The most elastic state, by Silver's calculation, is Rhode Island. More»